Is Your Facebook Page a Hacker Magnet?

Roughly 600,000 Facebook pages and accounts are hacked every single day. And sure, Facebook has a global user count of approximately 1.4 billion… but what would you do if your Facebook account had been hacked and compromised? If you’re like most people, you might think that you could simply delete the hacked page and start over. But that’s often more complex than you’d first think, and especially if you’re managing a business page which has sent malware links to clients, sometimes the damage can be irreparable.

First, we’ll talk about what elements of a Facebook page make a website look like a great hacking target!

Lots of friends or followers. If your Facebook page has hundreds, or better yet thousands of friends or followers, that makes you a prime target! Most hackers aren’t interested in getting your personal information… they’re using a big net, and trying to get the personal information of every single one of your friends.

Frequently posting links or images. If your Facebook page commonly sends links or images to all its friends or followers, that’s another big-ticket item for a hacker. They usually infect the computers and smartphones of other users after they click a link or image which has a hidden executable code.

You post your email address. If you post the email address you associate with your Facebook account in your ‘about’ section, you’ve just made the job of a hacker trying to get into your Facebook account 50{c584a3c71b685fcd96beea1844aef9782c2ee6d09f6362cffd32c21cdeda575f} less hard. Now all they need to do is crack your password! And if you have a 6 character password that’s all lower-case letters, guess what? Doing that might only take 10 minutes.

It doesn’t matter how secure your browsing habits are! Facebook pages are notoriously easy to hack. You could carefully monitor your internet browsing activity. Update your paid or free antivirus software every day, run it frequently, and always clear your browser cache… and still your account could be vulnerable. What can you do to protect yourself?

We’ve put together some great tips and tricks to help anyone secure their Facebook page or account! Many of these are even recommended by Facebook itself.

Use Maximum Security Settings

Log into Facebook as your page, and click the gear indicating the ‘Settings’ area. Once there, head to the area which denotes email notifications, and ensure it’s selected. That way you have an early warning system to let you know what activity is happening on your page, and can have a heads’ up if an unfamiliar device logged into your account.

Use The Highest Privacy Settings

If you make it more difficult for your information or account to be found by anyone, it’s necessarily harder for hackers to find your account! There are some other benefits to this as well: your account activity won’t show up in Google searches for your name, which can be great if you’re jobhunting. Don’t worry! You can still easily find and add friends using their email addresses. You get all of the benefits of additional protection and privacy with none of the drawbacks.

Utilize Two-Factor Logins

In the same settings area, there’s a place where you can opt to use two-factor login settings. This means that whenever you want to login from an unfamiliar device, Facebook will require that you enter in a short numerical code which it texts to your on-file cellphone to ensure that you are actually you.

Protecting Yourself Online

Social engineering hacks prey on social media accounts, and they’re more common on the most popular social media websites. Make sure that you don’t just protect yourself on Facebook: but on any social media site you regularly use!